Echo Series to Launch Marvel Spotlight Banner That Downplays MCU Continuity
Echo has added yet another first to its cap.
Already, the Hawkeye offshoot is the first Marvel series rated TV-MA to stream on Disney+… the first live-action Marvel series to get a binge release… and the first Marvel series to stream on both Disney+ and Hulu. And it revolves around Maya Lopez, a martial artist who is deaf and Native American.
But also, we have learned, Echo will launch a new subcategory of Marvel fare, under the Marvel Spotlight banner.
At a Friday-night screening of the series’ first two episodes, held at The District at Choctaw Casinos & Resorts in Durant, Okla. as part of a larger Choctaw Day celebration, those on hand saw the episodes prefaced by the new Marvel Spotlight banner. The retro-style banner is accompanied by a musical fanfare composed by Michael Giacchino; watch it here.
The new categorization takes its name from an anthology comic book series first introduced by Marvel in 1971, to launch new characters with minimal buy-in from the reader.
As Marvel Studios’ Head of Streaming Brad Winderbaum explained at the Friday screening, per Marvel.com, “Marvel Spotlight gives us a platform to bring more grounded, character-driven stories to the screen, and in the case of Echo, focusing on street-level stakes over larger MCU continuity.
“Just like comics fans didn’t need to read Avengers or Fantastic Four to enjoy a Ghost Rider Spotlight comic,” he added, “our audience doesn’t need to have seen other Marvel series to understand what’s happening in Maya’s story.”
The question on my and maybe your mind now is: Since Kingpin plays a large role in Echo, and Daredevil also appears, does that mean Daredevil: Born Again will also be an Marvel Spotlight offering? Discuss!
Releasing all five episodes Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2024 on both Disney+ and Hulu, Echo follows Maya Lopez (Hawkeye‘s Alaqua Cox) as she is pursued by Wilson Fisk’s (Vincent D’Onofrio) criminal empire. “When the journey brings her home, she must confront her own family and legacy,” the synopsis adds
The series also stars Chaske Spencer (Blindspot), Tantoo Cardinal (Stumptown), Devery Jacobs (Reservation Dogs), Cody Lightning (Smoke Signals), Graham Greene (Longmire) and Zahn McClarnon (Dark Winds), who is back as Maya’s father William. Plus, Charlie Cox’s Daredevil will reportedly appear in the series.
Want scoop on Echo, or for any other Marvel TV show? Email InsideLine@tvline.com, and your question may be answered via Matt’s Inside Line!
This is insane. They’re basically using the same approach that Marvel Television had with tv shows within the MCU but basically stand-alone with some cameos and funny overlap of consequences from things happening in the movies (which I personally didn’t hate) but that once the TV division was closed it led to so many shows getting cancelled and becoming non-canon (like the whole Defenders brench).
I just hope this will lead to have them use Daredevil to continue the “netflix version” instead of this soft-reboot non sense.
Also, who wants to actually watch a show within a shared universe but basically standing on its own? The whole premise of a shared universe is to have things interconnected, if Echo ends up being a stand alone show with no future it doesn’t really motivate me to watch it
I understand you, but, on the other hand, a lot of people are put off by the notion of having to watch 30+ films and 10+ series to keep up. Marvel’s only bright spot this year was Guardians 3, and that was James Gunn just doing his thing, mostly self-contained and people preferred that.
Well, decent writers will be able to thread this particular needle. “Exposition” and “continuity” aren’t dirty words if done properly. There is nothing in the Marvel Television MCU shows that can’t be integrated into the wider MCU easily.
Also, continuity issues? Have anyone ever read a comic. That’s what the “No Prize” is for.
While it’s possible to understand what is going on, caring is a lot harder. If you have not watched Clone Wars, Rebels, The Mandalorian or the Prequels, it’s very hard to difficult to anything going on in Ahsoka, for instance, because the emotional pay-offs depend on you caring for complicated, longstanding relationships. You can tell someone Anakin Skywalker was Ashoka’s fallen former master, but, if you have no prior idea who Anakin is, while you can understand, you can’t really relate to his participation on the show.
Wow Lee, it’s been years since I heard/read someone mention the “No Prize.”
To be fair, Agents of Shield was AMAZING because of the forced to stand on its own. If they do higher episode count seasons to attach to the characters and decent writing, it’ll be better than what they been doing.
I do not want to have to watch 8 series to understand what’s happening in the movie and neither does anyone else, as witnessed by the painfully dismal box office of most every film after Endgame.
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If someone wants to add three minutes of exposition to the film, so I don’t have to? Great. But they haven’t been doing that up to this point. As a matter of fact, up to this point, they have gone out of their way to tell me how it was all going to be one big, integrated universe, I’m not interested in that. Neither are very many other people apparently. They want to dip in and out as they please.
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It doesn’t help that most of the television outings have not been particularly good. Good thing Wandavision had an oversized premier because, if they just dropped one at a time I really would not have stuck around by the time something actually happens in Episode 3.
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She-Hulk? Abysmal from first frame to last. Terribly written and seemed to love mocking the MCU and its viewers. Add the fact that most of these shows have been money pits who were given blank checks just because “MCU” and it’s no big shock that things are imploding.
I feel like Moon Knight would be another good example of thekind of material intended for the “Marvel Spotlight” brand.
Ditto for Werewolf by Night.
Still waiting on confirmation of season 2. And yeah this works – doesnt need to be connected to enjoy it and it isnt really either at this stage.
Echo is already connected to MCU so i wouldnt have tried to now suddenly say its separate but also we are going to have daredevil and kingpin (which automatically makes it MCU)
It would have been okay if it had been some movies that shared the same universe, or continuity. But it grew so long the road map of movies that you should have watched if you were going to go to a Marvel movie that you feel the movie is lesser because you did not get all that you should because you were not going to watch dozens of movies to keep the current movie straight in your head.
They should have thought this approach earlier…
The way I read it, it’s just a way to differentiate the stakes. It still exists in the same universe, but it’s not part of the main story and isn’t a world-ending threat. It’s a threat to a neighborhood or a town rather than a country or a planet. Not something that would be on the radar of the Avengers.
Which makes sense. Not every character can save/threaten the world. There’s got to be different power scaling, especially when bringing in the mutants – They can’t just make every mutant be Omega-level to keep up with ever-escalating threats.
5 episodes? Thats a mini series. They need to start calling them as such. And then you have 2yrs between “seasons”. tV has gone to crap in terms of release dates and episode counts. I miss a good 22 ep season with 13 then back 9 pickup. You could do long slow arcs as well as story of the week fun.
Those days are just over. There are a lot of pros and cons though. It has devastated sitcoms. You cannot shoot sitcoms under the currrent model of filming all episodes in a bubble and then airing them all before you see what works and doesn’t work.
But when I think about a show like Smallville which ran 9 seasons with the traditional 22 episodes by the end of the show the last few years I was only watching about 9-13 episodes. That’s how many mattered to the plot and the rest were filler with no plot advancement whatsoever. Also a show Veronica Mars which I loved struggled to stretch their main plot lines over an entire season and decided to try something new in season 3 by doing multiple mysteries. The Flash did the same thing in its final seasons. 22 episode seasons are hard to arc and viewers are showing they don’t enjoy them and ratings show it.
I think Disney+ will see that releasing all the episodes at once for a show like this helps. Certain shows aren’t going to bring people back every week but are enjoyable as a whole.
Grey’s Anatomy is leading streaminng charts, currently, after Suits had an incredible run. I’m not sure viewers don’t enjoy them. These Marvel series have only 6 episodes and, still, most of them have filler episodes as well, because the seasons are so short it feels more like a bloated film than a series, where episodes interconnect, but also have each a beginning, middle and an end. Some filler episodes are the best. It’s where you have a comic respite. Or you focus more on characters. You get gems, like Spirit, in Smallville. TV isn’t just plot. Also, since you used Smallville as an example, seasons 9-10 were a lot more serialised and plot-heavy than the first seasons of Smallville.
Honestly, I was referring to more around seasons 7-8. I tuned back in for the last few seasons. You’re absolutely right about Smallville. But I think a large of what worked for those last few was having Justin Hartley as a series regular and Erica Durance full time instead of having her limited to 13 (or was it 11?). Having Lois missing for 3 episodes at a time was just weird. And of course there are standouts. But I don’t think modern shows, show runners, and writers are as good at this.
Also what you said about Grey’s and streaming…I think Grey’s does well in streaming because people like watching shows like it better at once instead of tuning in week to week. I don’t watch but it’s the kind of show that if I did watch would sit on my DVR and I’d probably wait and watch 3-5 episodes at a time. I watched TBBT but it wasn’t appointment television for me. Sometimes my DVR would have 6 episodes at a time that I would watch all at once over the course of a few hours that piled up. But those were the days I had a lot of shows on the main networks I watched. That really isn’t the case these days.
This basically means she’ll never be in the movies. It’s a categorization excuse to not ever have to put her in movie continuity. Wilson Fisk and Matt Murdock are a different matter. They’re big enough characters that can be properly utilized. Echo? She’s just an echo and then gone.
She’s actually been the host of the Phoenix at one point…which I thought was weird *Shrug*
The Marvel scene has gotten to complicated. In order to keep up you need to watch 10 plus movies and with all the off shoots it’s just to time consuming. Marvel and DC need to team up 💪👍💪 with some good old fashioned smash and grab and get back to basics. The strike completely ruined everything. 😎🆗✅💥🎶🎵🌞😞😎
I’m of two minds about this:
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First, the Marvel Spotlight titles (there were two) back in the 70’s and early 80’s were actually anthologies that rotated subjects every 2-3 issues, sometimes less, sometimes more, sometimes with a return of a popular feature, to test out whether or not a cover feature was ready to spun off into their own book. And sometimes, as with the original male Captain Marvel (Mar-Vell), to wrap up a series that was cancelled with an issue or issues in the can, ready to be published. So to the extent that Marvel Spotlight could be used as a catch-all title (or, in streaming terms, hub) for the miniseries that don’t tie too directly into any of the movies, there’s precedent for it in the comics, with this name. Thus, the series isn’t Echo, it’s Marvel Spotlight. And Moon Knight, She-Hulk, Werewolf by Night, and Ms. Marvel could also arguably be included.
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Second, the Marvel Spotlight title could be a mistake because it could send the signal that “you don’t need to see these series to understand the movies.” And that would start to make all Marvel TV series expendable in the eyes of casual viewers, which could then affect the viability of series like Loki, Falcon & the Winter Soldier, Hawkeye and WandaVision that do tie more directly into the movies because they even star core actors from the Avengers films, when casual viewers start seeing them as more expendable, too. Especially when WandaVision was essentially undone where it wasn’t straight-out ignored by Doctor Strange 2. If Sam Raimi isn’t obligated to do reshoots to Doctor Strange 2 to show how and why Wanda relapsed in a way that really ties into Doctor Strange’s own issues, then why do WandaVision at all or why do Doctor Strange 2 at all? One of them really should have had to go, as good as they are individually (and IMO, it should have been Doctor Strange 2.)
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Likewise, Jack Kirby’s last creation for Marvel, The Eternals, which was a hard sell to begin with because it’s so bizarre, likely would have ended up as an Inhumans-level debacle had it been, say, relegated to a miniseries run under the Marvel Spotlight banner, with a TV-level cast rather than a movie-level cast. Eternals may be the red-headed stepchild of Marvel movies, but IMO, it worked, and the Marvel Spotlight banner shouldn’t be used as an excuse to not take big screen chances with a weird property. Otherwise, Guardians of the Galaxy never would have made it to theaters.